REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL (Part 4)
Two years have now passed from the death of Ian Dury, and as promised in The Unbearable Shiteness of Ian it is time to calmly, critically and objectively rate his body of work. At least it might be time for other people to do that kind of dull, sober review. Me – I think his body of work was a manky as his physical body – the failing of one thankfully stopped the other. As mentioned elsewhere hanging around with a band called The Blockheads suggested the general intelligence of everyone working with him.
Sickness can be an excuse in the short term, but if I worked in industry (and frankly such an idea is anathema to me), using sickness as anexcuse for shoddy work for twenty years is pushing it a bit. Okay Ian, you had polio as a kid but that’s not an excuse for not even trying to sing. And certainly no excuse for Spasticus Autisticus when you neither had multiple sclerosis or autism. You can try to use the excuse that the song is in character, but its basically in the character that didn’t realise that the song would be used in the summer of Joey Deacon to abuse fifty percent of the countries children. The ones who had already been partially been crippled by being hit with what was so euphamistically called a “rythmn stick” a few years before (in my case the rythmn stick was a bamboo cane and made me destest music lessons and much of what came out of them ever since).
What annoys me most about Dury (apart from his son) is that he appeared to be totally aware of how annoyingly useless he was. Look at the list of jobs he could have done on “What A Waste” that he could of done instead of playing the fool in a six piece band. “What a waste, what a waste – but I don’t mind” Dury sings, but what about the rest of us. We blood mind your lousy Essex vowels removing any aspect of wit from the lyrics already sucked out by the monotonous delivery. I bloody mind. And I also beg to differ the “Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll is very good indeed”. Actually not only is it not rock’n’roll (which would be a “thank heavens for small mercies” moment if it wasn’t jazz-funk instead), but it isn’t even vaguely good. Sex and drugs I can agree with, but have you ever tried to do the wild thing or take acid with the Big Bopper on?
In conclusion when discussing Ian Dury one has to hold your hand up and go for a partially disabled bloke he had a remarkable career. But I would go even further. For a bloke who was rubbish it was remarkable he had a career at all. “There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards” Ian says. Not you Dury, not you.
How blind you are, this man had more talent in the dirt under his finger nails than you will ever have, who else could rhyme words in such a surprizin way , you never knew what u was gonna get with Ian and that is what made listening to his latest album , for the first time so exciting. The greatest Lyracist of all time . The opening line of Plastow Patricia is especially for u
Yeah, I realize you enjoy being a troll, but I’ve gotta stand up for Ian Dury’s memory nonetheless. He put his spirit, humor, and talent into those songs. He had the balls to put it out there, knowing some people would like it and some wouldn’t… but the point is, he went after what he wanted to do. …rather than sitting around devoting himself to finding reasons to hate what other people had done.
As trolls go Tanya is a pretty idle one since all she does is sit happily typing away in her very clearly signposted lair.
you are obviouly a desturbed invervidual but that does not excuse you from being a narrow minded bigot! “his body of work was a manky as his physical body” your remarks are completely out of order. grow up and look/ listen to the world around you, you might learn something!
Why not go to school and learn to read and write? You might learn how to spell words like “desturbed” and “invervidual” properly.
The depressing thing is how many people who should know better, hold him up as a shining example of quality songwriting when his schtick was basically just stringing together non-sequiturs that happened to rhyme.
That’s pretty much all pop music disqualified, then.
Hey Hughie, I wonder if Ian would enjoy the clever wording of LyRACIST up there!
The lyric to What A Waste is actually
“What a waste, what a waste – Rock ‘n’ Roll don’t mind”
Sorry that you think Ian was useless, Tanya. Are YOU useful then? And in what way?
I appreciate him, and a couple of his tunes even poopulate my all time faves (no not the sex & drugs one, how cliche). But he did have a very uneven body of work. Yeah, just like his own body. I’m sure he would’ve smiled about that remark. And if not, f@$k ‘im, he’s dead.
It’s somewhat unsettling how all the Dury fans posting from their local libraries can’t spell. Autism as a marketing gimmick, kids.